


I Shake, Burn, Break, It's Just My Reaction

by ryry_peaches



Series: Missing Conversations From the Creek [3]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s06e02 The Incident, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22556266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/ryry_peaches
Summary: The aftermath of The Incident that we never got from canon, wherein David grapples with the mortifying ordeal of being known by the entire town.-"She thought she had turned it off, she doesn't really understand how it works.""So everyone in the world heard my mother talking about my —""Night-time oopsie-daisy?"  Patrick cringes. "…Yeah. And —""Oh my fucking God,and?"
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: Missing Conversations From the Creek [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604422
Comments: 22
Kudos: 264





	I Shake, Burn, Break, It's Just My Reaction

**Author's Note:**

> I think I call Patrick "soft" like eight times in 3,000 words, so enjoy that. David is gonna get really into his emotions re: public humiliation here. But fear not, Patrick is always here to help.
> 
> Title from "Tectonic" by Brendan Maclean, which I think is a pretty David/Patrick song even though it really isn't, actually.

David wakes up perpendicular, bent at the waist with his head in Patrick's lap. He blinks the grit away from his eyes, and becomes slowly aware of more things: Patrick's fingers tangled in his hair but not moving; the stiff, crinkly plastic under the sheets; the warm, dry state of said sheets in his general crotch area.

"Oh, thank God," David breathes, and he feels Patrick more than he hears him chuckle lightly.

"Sleep well, David?"

"Mm, certainly better than last night." David groans and pushes himself up, shifting and sliding until he's up by Patrick, mashing his face into Patrick's shoulder.

"Nice and dry?"

"Okay," David says, eyes squeezed shut, "I don't actually think I'm ready yet to be teased about this, so…"

"Okay, that might become a problem," Patrick says, and there's a decidedly serious note in his voice that makes David's skin prickle with suspicion. He pulls back without opening his eyes, takes a deep, cleansing yoga breath.

"Why might that be a problem," he says flatly.

"David, can you open your eyes?"

"Okay, I would really prefer not to do that because I just don't think I can take looking you in the eyes when you say whatever it is you're about to say." David's words come out high and rapid, and he grips the sheets to keep from waving his hands around.

Patrick sighs audibly. "Okay. You know how your mom did that social media takeover?"

David feels like every single nerve in his body is tensing up. "My mother posted about it?"

"Uh, no, not quite. Remember how she was livestreaming when she came into the store?"

"Oh my God." David opens his eyes; Patrick is staring at his own hands, folded in his lap.

"She thought she had turned it off, she doesn't really understand how it works."

"So everyone in the world heard my mother talking about my —"

"Night-time oopsie-daisy?" Patrick cringes. "…Yeah. And —"

"Oh my fucking God, _and?"_

"After you left, your mom and I got to talking —"

"About the _Crows_ movie," David says forcefully, hoping that he can make it true by saying it.

Patrick looks like he'd like to sink right through the mattress and disappear rather than have this conversation. "David, you gotta stop interrupting me."

"I think I'm entitled," David says shrilly, "but go on, I suppose."

"She said that this…issue…is something that cropped up when you got excited about things as a kid. And that it probably happened now because you're so excited about the wedding. And then _I_ said," he says, voice rising, "that I find that _flattering_ and kind of adorable."

"And then my mother caught it immediately and deleted the whole thing before anyone saw it," David says, begging God or the universe or something for that to be true.

"Um…then Alexis caught it," Patrick says.

There's more, David can _sense_ it, because his sister is one of his best friends but also a fucking gremlin who _will_ cyberbully him without hesitation. "And Alexis deleted it, right?" He asks tightly, praying against the odds that the answer is _yes._

"She _did_ delete it," Patrick says quickly, defensively, almost, "after I made her…and unfortunately it seems your mom had already told all her friends about the livestream."

"Oh my God." David covers his face with his hands, shaking his head, feeling so hot with shame that he thinks his skin might start peeling.

"David, it's really not _that_ bad, I mean, really the biggest takeaway I got was that you were weirdly into the Ides of March as a kid —"

"No, it's bad, Patrick, don't tell me it's not bad okay because it's not _you_ whose mother just told the _entire town_ that you peed in your marital bed!" He tries to take another yoga breath; his lungs feel tight. "Which is _your_ fault because if you had kept your mouth shut she wouldn't have been able to do that!" He feels a little bad about yelling at Patrick — Patrick had been trying to deflect David's mom from finding out, and it wasn't his fault that despite barely having been involved with them as kids, she actually had paid a lot of attention when they were growing up.

But really, he doesn't _care_ that he's being unfair. The whole situation is unfair. He was finally feeling okay when he drifted off to sleep last night — Patrick made everything feel okay, made him feel like it really _wasn't_ a big deal, wasn't an earth-shattering catastrophe but a very minor bump in the road. Patrick, with his mouth guard (seriously, not embarrassing, why hasn't he been using it) and his tremendously ugly plastic anti-snoring thing (he _barely_ snores and David actually likes the white noise).

Patrick is good at finding silver linings, and producing them if he has to, perfect little gestures that bring David from anxious spirals to almost-zen levels of calmness.

There is no perfect little gesture to fix this, no band-aid for it. David slides down the bed and tugs the covers up; the plastic crinkles under him like it's mocking him.

"David —"

David closes his eyes and tries yet another deep breath, this one moderately more successful than the last. And then he puts to work some of the communication skills he's learned between his many therapists and his present relationship: "Listen, it's not your fault, but I really can't — I'm not ready to deal with this, okay? Could you maybe take a walk around the block once or twice?" Okay, not the kindest or most eloquent, but whatever: he's communicated his need.

Patrick is quiet for so long that David opens his eyes to peek at him, and finds Patrick gazing back; whatever he sees in David's eyes must convince him, because he leans down to kiss David softly on the forehead and then slides out of bed. "I'll be back in ten minutes, okay?"

David nods, watching wordlessly as Patrick grabs his keys and his phone, slides on the sweatpants and hoodie that he leaves near the bed for lounging in. (Not that Patrick does a lot of lounging.) He casts David a last look with an unreadable almost-smile before he leaves.

The second David hears the click of the key in the lock — who locks their doors when they're _home_ in _Schitt's Creek?_ — he rolls to Patrick's side of the bed and receives his own phone from the drawer in his bedside table. It's at forty-nine percent because that's what happens when you leave it with a full charge overnight (so he needs an upgrade, noted) and the link from Ronnie is still sitting in his texts, manifesting as an innocuous little ① symbol chilling out on the little envelope icon.

He looks at it for a moment, wondering if it's normal for that little symbol to fill him with so much terror. Finally he opens the app and taps Ronnie's thread, where there's a link to a Google doc that holds a screen recording. David sees Moira in the thumbnail.

Hating himself more with every second, David clicks _play._

There's his mom, walking into the store with clicking heels and announcing that she's coined a new word for fans. There's David himself, refusing to cooperate with the whole thing, and then Patrick, the love of his life, informing his mother that she doesn't have to say "hashtag" out loud when she talks.

The screen goes black, and David turns the volume up.

David almost whites out with humiliated rage when Moira says _"juiced up,"_ and then again with _"floodgates."_ And then he can hear the reluctant amusement in Patrick's voice when he says _"Aw, why am I oddly flattered?"_

_"I can imagine,"_ Moira says, sounding horrified.

_"I'm just worried about him,"_ Patrick says next. _"He's so upset, and it's not…I'm not. Upset or mad at him or anything. I just feel bad that he's so embarrassed."_

_"Pat,"_ says Moira, making David cringe because they don't do _Pat, "feeling bad isn't going to help David. Just be here for him, keep being your solid self. He'll recover in his own time."_

David feels strangely warm towards his mom, until she tacks on, _"In the meantime, keep an eye on his liquid intake before bed."_

_"Okay,"_ Patrick says in the same tone he uses when he thinks that David is kind of acting like an entitled brat but not enough to actually say anything about it, _"thanks for stopping by, Mrs Rose. It was lovely to see you, as always."_

David waits until he sees his mom's shoes marching out of the store to turn the video off, and then he just lies there with the thumbnail still onscreen, hand limp with his phone still in it, and kind of stares at a bit of splintering in the wood on Patrick's nightstand and okay, okay, he tries to breathe and his chest hurts and he's _spiralling._

David is used to humiliation. He's been stood up, filmed, photographed, slept with for revenge, taken out for attention. He's traded friends month by month, traded favors both salacious and practical, shared beds with people who never even bothered to ask his name, and he's accepted it all as part of the socialite life, part of his past.

But he's never humiliated _himself_ in front of someone whose opinion mattered at all. He's been dumped and ended up on page six for it, but he's never allowed his body to betray him, never allowed his neurosis to bleed out of him any more than could be considered typical of his social circle.

Until he landed in Schitt's Creek and was, for the first time in his life, surrounded by people who wouldn't even pretend to be charmed by him because he had nothing but himself to offer. And when it was just him — not David Rose, the heir to the Rose fortune, not David Rose, the Brooklyn gallerist who could introduce you to Sebastien Rhein, just David whose dad owns the town, David who wears skirts to the supermarket and talks like his mom.

No one has ever seen David as exposed as Patrick has — Stevie has come hair's-breadth close but Patrick is the one who sits on the bathroom counter while David takes the long, full-grooming-routine showers, the one who's helped David with his nine-step skin care regimen, and the only person outside of Alexis who has seen the way David dances when he's not trying to be seen.

And then he'd — it feels like too much to even _think,_ his whole body going red-hot with the feeling of it. And Patrick just managed it like he manages everything. David is a handful, he knows, but he's never been too much for Patrick. Patrick made everything okay with his stupid nose thing and his mouth guard. And then he made everything _bad_ again, except David can acknowledge that this is really his mom's fault, but he —

He can never leave this apartment again.

By the time Patrick returns, David has calmed down a little — his thoughts have stopped spiralling again, because he's made a decision: he's going to spend the rest of his life holed up in Patrick's apartment.

"Hey, baby," Patrick says softly when he approaches the bed. He almost never calls david _baby_ — usually only when he's really tired, but sometimes in moments like this, when David is struggling and Patrick is trying to help him through. "I brought you a hot chocolate from the cafe."

David grunts, buried deep in the blankets. Patrick leans over him and snatches his phone away, kissing him on the top of the head at the same time. "And a waffle," Patrick says as he pulls back, cajoling. "So maybe you want to sit up for me?"

David looks up at him with his best puppy-dog-eyes-emoji expression. "Did you get whipped cream?"

"I have some in the fridge," Patrick says, and David sighs and pulls himself upright. "There he is," Patrick says with a soft little smile.

David takes his cocoa from the nightstand and sips it gingerly as Patrick putters softly about the kitchen, watching him quietly. When Patrick returns with one of the cafe's fluffy belgian waffles, topped with syrup and whipped cream and strawberries and which Patrick has, adorably, arranged on a real plate atop a bed tray, David decides to make his perfectly reasonable announcement.

"So I think I'm placing myself under house arrest," he says as loftily as he can manage, accepting a fork and a napkin.

"Come again?" Patrick's eyes go impossibly wide.

David takes a big bite of his waffle and chews for a long moment, holding up his hand. "I think it would be better if I just…stayed here for awhile. Didn't go out like. In public. For a bit." He grimaces under Patrick's judgment face.

"David, I understand that you're embarrassed —"

David shakes his head emphatically. "M-mm, no, it's not just _embarrassment,"_ he says. "Snorting Xanax that was sold to me as coke and passing out at Nick Jonas' Halloween party was embarrassing. Doing 'The Number' with my mother well into my adulthood was embarrassing. _Wetting_ the _bed_ in front of my _fiancé_ was _embarrassing."_ He shudders. "The entire town knowing it happened. I — I don't even have words for it, Patrick. I don't know how to look people in the eye after this."

Patrick climbs up onto the bed and sits with his legs crossed like a kid, facing David. "David, I love you," he says.

David tries on a wry smile. "Glad one of us does," he says, parroting what he said yesterday.

Patrick doesn't smile back. "That doesn't feel like a joke, honey. But I really, really do, and I don't think you realize how much people around here respect you."

David laughs for real, a little, choked-off syllable. "Okay, that is definitely a lie to soothe my ego, and I do need it right now, so thank you."

"David, can you stop," Patrick says, going for level and nearing the wrong side of _sharp._ David blinks at him, nonplussed. He reaches forward and rubs David's knee through the blanket, trying to soothe him, to comfort him, to remind him that they're on the same side. "David. I love you, and I respect you, and your body betrayed you. These things happen."

"Yeah, to _me,"_ David says. "Look, hon, I really appreciate how hard you're trying to help, and I love you, but there's nothing you can say that will fix this."

Patrick gives him a long, dark look, something closed-off in his eyes that David finds disquieting — Patrick's eyes are usually saucer-wide and shiny and expressive. "Okay," he says finally. "Basically everyone we know shops at the store, right?"

"Yeah, I guess?" David blinks at the non sequitur.

"Okay, there we go. Anyone says anything to you, or about you, anyone even looks at you sideways — they're banned, no questions asked."

David laughs, surprised more than anything. "Do we think that's maybe a bit much? I mean, Roland is almost _definitely_ going to say something, and if we lose him, there goes Jocelyn, and most of the mommy and me crowd, so I feel like banning might be a _bit_ of an overreact — _oh,"_ he says, comprehension and clarity falling on him like an Acme anvil on poor, unsuspecting Wile E Coyote. Flattening him into a little David pancake as he realizes suddenly the depth of his shame spiral. "Okay, very sly, Mr Brewer."

"What?" Patrick throws on his best _who, me?_ look, eyes once again wide and guileless and totally full of it. "I thought it was a good suggestion!"

"Okay, _fine,"_ David says, very maturely ignoring Patrick's frankly obnoxious display of faux innocence, "I will rejoin society, but…"

"But?" Patrick prompts, nearly but not quite teasing.

"But not today," David says, feeling suddenly and simultaneously both brittle and soft. Still completely off-kilter. "Today, can I just eat my breakfast and go back to sleep and just…reorient myself?"

Patrick knows that it's serious because David isn't being coy with the request. "Of course, David," he says softly, dropping his teasing edges. "I'll text Twyla and ask her to run over and put up a note saying we're closed for the day."

"You aren't going in?"

"Nope." Patrick crawls awkwardly up the bed to settle closer to David, knocking their knees together. "I'm taking a personal day. You see, my fiance has been through some shit and I really feel I should be here to comfort him."

David forces a smile, mouth shut as he chews his waffle. "Thank you," he says, holding his breakfast tray stable with one hand so he can bump his knee against Patrick's.

Patrick smiles, eyes gentle, and leans over the tray to kiss David's cheek loudly. "You're welcome," he says softly.

David finishes his waffle in silence, avoiding thinking about…all of it by watching Patrick tap away at his phone, texting Twyla and then Stevie, emailing Heather because they were supposed to call her today. When David is done, Patrick clears up his tray for him, and David watches that quietly, too. When Patrick comes back from the kitchen he takes his sweatshirt off and pulls back the blanket, nudging David back to his own side of the bed. He crawls in behind him and pulls the covers up, then gets his arms around David's waist, tugging him back to his own chest. He noses into the back of David's shoulder. "Okay?" He asks softly.

David sighs and tries to relax back into Patrick. "Yeah," he says, a little too breathy and strained to fool Patrick, still a little too anxious. "You're making it okay," he says instead.

"Mm." Patrick sighs back. "If it's okay, David, I do have a question for you."

David sighs again, trying not to let his belly clench against the trepidation. "Go ahead."

He can feel Patrick smiling against his neck, warm breath following when he said, "It's just, David…Julius Caesar?"

**Author's Note:**

> Gah hope y'all enjoyed this one. I literally haven't been the same since The Incident, it's truly such an important episode to me, not just for SC but for any show, and I took a break from some WIPs in this series to write this. It really did take me the entire past 2 and a half weeks because I kept getting stuck every time I tried to make Patrick's movements feel natural, lol.
> 
> If you liked this, feel free to visit me on Tumblr at my main, fourgetregret.tumblr.com or my schitt blog, loveburnsbrighter.tumblr.com and feel very free to drop prompts for other codas, I love writing this series so much and would love more inspo (on top of what I've already got in the works lmao)!


End file.
